Just Do Something That is Different with Derek Hayden

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Today, we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you. It is a conversation with Derek Hayden, insurance advisor at Danzig Insurance Risk Advisors out of Shelbyville, Illinois. He's a certified risk architect. According to his LinkedIn profile, which I love when we fancy up that producer title, but I'm just giving Derek a hard time. Derek's an amazing dude.

I think he's an incredible producer. I love the way he thinks about the business. And as I kind of say at the very end of our conversation, which you'll hear, so I'm kind of not bearing the lead here, I think Derek marries a respect and understanding for how the business was done and should be done from a traditional standpoint with where the puck is going, with that new kind of digital age, that human-optimized age. I think Derek is very much a human-optimized producer, and I absolutely love that we had a chance to talk with him, get his insights. Derek is also the winner of the very first protege, David Carruthers Insurance Reality Show, The Protege.

Derek was a participant and ultimately the winner. He did an absolutely tremendous job, kind of catapulted him into the national insurance spotlight, and showed exactly what is possible when you set your sights on a goal and you take care of business. I think the world of Derek, I think the world of the work he does, and kind of mad at myself for not having him on the show earlier. That's my fault. I apologize to all of you for keeping Derek from you, even though you most likely have heard him on other podcasts.

This is a tremendous episode that you're going to love. Before we get there, two quick things, housekeeping items. One is if you love this show, share it with a friend. The more people that hear the show, the more people that get involved in this kind of human-optimized concept, the more people that believe in what we're doing, that understand what we understand, who believe what we believe, who share good concepts, share insights, share kind of this human-optimized methodology of traditional caring, compassion, experience, expertise in insurance with kind of the fast-moving, ease-of-business, digital producer style. Share the show if you love it.

That's the best way to support the show. And if you love the audio, if you love the podcast, I'm also writing blog posts on findingpeak.com. Go to findingpeak.com. It's all about peak performance and business, life, how we put our mental and our physical selves in position to be successful. You know, how do we get our mental right?

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Go to findingpeak.com. Enter your email in. It's free. I think you'll dig it. Also, last but not least, big shout out to Tivly, T-I-V-L-Y.com, T-I-V-L-Y.com.

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We've had a wonderful experience. Highly recommend T-I-V-L-Y.com, T-I-V-L-Y.com. All right, with that, guys, let's get on to the absolutely tremendous Derek Hayden. I'm going to Shaboom! There he is.

What's going on, broski? What's up, man? Not a whole lot. Just trying to make it happen, you know? Just out here dominating another day.

Is that the deal? That's right. You better believe it. Yeah, I love it. So what's it like out there?

You know, what's it like? You know, what's the... I haven't been a boot... You know, I haven't been boots on the ground in a while. What's going on?

What's the climate? Yeah, what's the climate? What's it like? Oh, man, it's going. I will say the activity is flowing.

The hard market has a lot of people worried. So it's good and bad. Got a lot of new opportunities, and I'm fighting to keep some clients out there. And I will tell you that some of our carriers are keeping me on my toes. We're getting, you know, the 30% renewal notices left and right, it seems like, on certain accounts.

We just had a sales meeting yesterday. One of our carriers that we have a lot of our small church business with, they are backing out. So that's going to be fun. Yeah, it's just another day in the insurance world, man. Yeah.

So I want to talk... Let's talk about the hard market because... Yeah. So at Rogue, we deal with a mostly small business, right? And, you know, we haven't really seen at the small business level, like, you know, we don't deal a lot of times with these major, major increases.

You know, I see little incremental increases and stuff. And it kind of is what it is. And it's definitely a volume game and, you know, all that kind of stuff. But when you're dealing with, you know, larger accounts or you're dealing with, you know, even smaller or larger, small accounts, accounts that you, you know, there's always, there's also with Rogue, you know, there's an arm's distance for a lot of our business, right? These people come to us and, you know, they're not looking for a local person who's, like, going to go to their church and their ballgame and see all over town.

So I know it's different when you're living a little more of that life. You know what I mean? Sure, sure. So what is, you know, and then I hear both sides of the story with the hard market being like, ah, you know, you get a lot of opportunity with hard markets because the shitty agents, you know, that aren't on their game, those accounts become available. And all of a sudden their 10 is up, but then the kind of same goes for your clients, too.

So, like, talk to me a little bit about your feelings just on a hard market and how you're, you know, being that for a lot of people listening, this is probably the first time they've ever experienced a hard market. Right. What does it mean? How are you doing with it? Are you sweating bullets every day?

Are you feeling good? You know, what is it? How does it impact you? Yeah, well, we got our kind of our first taste about mid-summer 2022. And it was a, it was a bad, bad situation.

So the client found out about their increase they're receiving before we did. And so that kind of, that jump started our process of like, hey, we've got to know, we had a meeting with all of our carrier reps and said, hey, we need to know that this is happening before our client gets something in the mail. They're like, yeah, we messed up for some reason. It was supposed to be emailed to you. It wasn't emailed to you.

Anyway, so for me, I am in a small rural area that our people are like going to church with us and local diner with us. So surprises are not good because surprises are heard about, you know, by everybody before it gets to me sometimes. So what it's like in a smaller town is we, we are, we are basically trying to prepare our clients like, hey, just expect this. We're doing more pre-renewal meetings. So, you know, you're looking more at like the 120 to 180 day out saying, hey, here's what we're seeing.

We're sending market outlooks like, hey, just so you know, this is what's happening in the marketplace. We are on top of it. Don't get too panicked. Don't get too panicked. It may be okay.

But just want to let you know what we're seeing in the marketplace. We're trying to do a little more preparation than we would have in the past, just because we don't want that to be a surprise. And then they just jump ship before we even get a chance to talk to them. So we're sending out more email campaigns, more pre-renewal meetings on our larger accounts, just game planning for, you know, what's going to happen in the next 180 days or so. So it's taking more time, but at the same time, I feel like it is growing the relationships with our clients because it's stuff they've never had these pre-renewal meetings so far out where they're game planning, putting more risk management items in place to reduce the, you know, the exposures that they have.

So it's, like I said, good and bad, but we had a very rude awakening when it first started to affect our agency because we were not ready for it. Do you find that if you do communicate earlier in the process, if you do set the meetings up, if you do prepare your clients for what to expect and that you get a positive response, that they, that it kind of solves the issue? Or do you find that they'll still kind of buck and, you know, I don't know, threaten or, or consider, you know, shopping or whatever. Do you think it, for the most part, if you can get out ahead of it and be that good steward, it locks them in? In our experience, if we're ahead of it, they, they are more appreciative rather than alerting them to go shopping.

I can see where that could be a concern. And I'm sure if we, you know, it's the way that you put it to them. Say, hey, this is what we're experiencing. This is why you're in the right spot with our agency, because we're doing X, Y, and Z to prepare for it. Here's some things we recommend for you to do as we prepare so we can present your account in a, you know, more professional manner, underwriting, negotiating time.

In our experience, it's a positive, but I can definitely see where it could be looked at as a negative and put up, you know, red flags to a client and be like, all right, that's, that scared us into, let's go ahead and contact somebody else. Yeah, it, it, it almost feels to me like, um, it, it all, it's, it's very, very dependent on how you position this, right? Like if you can get out ahead of it and say, look, like we're all over this. We know that something's coming. We don't know what it's going to be yet.

It could be 5%. It could be 50%. We don't know. We're seeing, this is what we're seeing with some of our other clients just to give you an idea. And, um, you know, here's how we get, you know, if you kind of lay that groundwork out, um, and set those expectations, people are just so much more amenable to what you want them to do.

I feel like too often, um, too often in our industry, we, we either assume they just trust us and are going to do what we say, or we assume they actually know what the hell is going on. And in both those cases, we tend to be wrong, right? They, they neither, you know, they, they, they trust us, but they're still paying us a lot of money. So, you know, there's always that. And, uh, they certainly, most of them have absolutely no clue what is happening day to day.

So it feels like that expectation setting is, is, is huge. Yeah, for sure. We just had this talk this morning, me and another guy in my agency, like everybody, everybody seems like on the surface, looks like they know what they're doing. No one knows what they're doing. Everybody's just making it up as we go.

So, but if you can be a little more prepared than the next guy or next gal, it goes a long way. Like everybody's just flying by the seat of their pants and we don't know what's going to happen until you do get that renewal by email or whatever. Everybody is, no one knows exactly what they're doing. Just kind of making it up. So if you're going in, you're a little more prepared.

Um, you have the ability to put things in place and make the client feel like you're able to handle it. Whatever happens, whatever comes your way, we're going to handle it. It makes them sleep a little bit better and not talk as bad about you at the local coffee shop. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, now have you seen opportunities to get into accounts that you, maybe you otherwise haven't had an opportunity to get into?

Do you have you seen maybe people who are with agencies that are a little lazy or complacent, or maybe just don't know how to handle a hard market? There, those opportunities are starting to pop up. Do you see this also, even though you have to work a little harder on what you have, you're also seeing on the back end as well? Yep. We're seeing, I'm seeing a lot of the small business, probably the size that you, you play in, um, you know, the five to 15,000 premium total.

Um, we're seeing a lot of con call-ins, like people are contacting us on those accounts. Yeah. Um, even accounts I've never even called on there, either they're watching our content or something and they're saying, I think it's time we give it, you know, give it a look with you guys. But, um, we were, we had a, uh, recently had a carrier, um, meeting, I guess you would say where they have their annual dinner and their awards and watching the agents who are accepting the awards, walking up on stage, the average age for these dudes and a few gals had to have been like 69 years old. Um, there's no way that those are the people who are going that extra mile to have the pre-renewal meetings.

Uh, they're just getting the renewal and passing it on to the client saying, Hey, if you make changes, let us know. I think there's a ton of opportunity out there. Um, and I think a lot of clients are scared to make the first move sometimes, but it has now got to the point where they're like, okay, I've got to talk to someone else because, you know, Billy Bob Smith is just, I'm getting an email from the carrier every year with a seven, eight, nine, 10% increase. And I'm not getting anything from it just keeps going up and up. And I think now that maybe those increases are maybe a little bit more than typical there it's pushing them over the edge to say, all right, I saw Derek do that video or do, you know, he talked to me about this one issue.

It's time to, you know, open the box and see what he can do. Yeah, it's, yeah, I, uh, I always take the carrier awards with a grain of salt because, you know, I'm always interested, like, are they growing or are they just big? Because like big is like, you probably deserve the award 15 years ago, but are you still growing or are you just, cause, cause I know, you know, it's funny. I had a carrier, um, you know, one of my favorite carriers, uh, who I'm not going to name in this, even though I normally do, I'm not going to name them in this particular case, but they're one of my favorite carriers. And when I was getting the appointment two years ago with them, um, uh, you know, we were just talking and, you know, how do you appoint people?

And, you know, they're, they're like kind of a middle of the road. They don't appoint everybody, but you know, it's not like the hardest appointment to get, but at the same time, you know, they're not in every shop and, you know, they're, you know, you gotta have a business. Plan and, you know, whatever. Okay. So I actually like those ones.

I think the carriers that make you like jump through 17 hoops, I don't appreciate that because I found that even when you do that, you don't get that back. Like you don't get the loyalty back. Um, uh, so it's not like you're getting anything special, even though you had to work harder to get the appointment. I find, um, I could be wrong, but at least I found that to be the case, but I like, you know, I obviously, it's not always your favorite to have an appointment. That every single agency has, like, it doesn't always do you very good, you know, whatever.

Okay. Long story short, I'm talking to these guys and I'm saying, you know, what, what's the plant, what's the agency plant look like locally or whatever. And they're like, you know, they're like, we have an agent who, uh, is down in Troy, who's had an appointment with us for 10 years. Um, built up a book of 250,000 in premium and has not sold an account with us in five years, but they're just above the threshold for like, like losing their appointment. Right.

So they just, it's just, this just sits there every year and does nothing. And he's like, I don't even go there anymore. I haven't talked to the guy in two years. Like, but the guy just sits there and you're like, that is such an odd thing in our industry that like you, you, you know, carriers will, and I'm not knocking carriers. Cause they're, they have their own struggles.

And this isn't like a, I'm not trying to make this like a knock on carriers thing. It's just an interesting piece of our industry where like, you know, you'll have young guys like, uh, um, uh, the, the interview that will come out right before this one is with Steven Turnbull. So everyone who's listening to this one, if you listen to the last one, it was Steven Turnbull who just started T5 and he right now is mostly purse lines or whatever. But, uh, you know, you take a guy like that, who's just got to scrape and scratch and, and lie through his teeth to get every freaking appointment, you know, to get an appointment. Right.

He's got to like, you know, and he's growing and, and all he wants to do is put premium buying books and, you know, they'll beat them up and smack them around. But then they'll let some schmuck with two 50 and premium, just sit on that thing for five years and not even question it. You know? And it's like, it's just an odd thing, but I get it. Like where, if you take his appointment away, what happens to that premium?

Where does it go? You know what I mean? Whatever. It's just, it's just an odd thing in our industry that you could do that and then just sit on it. And if you sit on big enough, a book, you'll just get an award every year and earn a trip, get an award.

Yeah. It's funny because, so I don't know how this is. I have a few clients who used to own insurance agencies, not even my insurance agency, just used to own agencies and their wives will come in. So this is, this tells you our, you know, small town, they still come in to pay their premiums sometimes. So they'll all like, they'll, they'll be sitting out there and like paying their premiums.

If I hear their voice and I know who it is, I'll walk out of my office and say, Hey, and do all, you know, do the song and dance. And they'll say, well, you know, how's, did you take that XYZ company trip this year? Boy, we used to love those trips. We used to, that's the reason we never sold the agency. Cause we like to take those trips.

It's like, you know, that they didn't go out there and beat the streets and try to win new business. They are just in it to take a trip to, you know, San Diego every year or whatever happened to be. So it's the, it's the lifestyle agency, man. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's no, absolutely.

I, you know, I, I, there is nothing wrong with the lifestyle agency. I guess my only, my only gripe ever is why is the, there's the bit of hypocrisy that comes with that, right? The, the, I'm trying, I want to get out here. I want to kill myself. I want to go grow and you're just going to beat the crap out of me and make it as hard as possible.

And, you know, question everything I do, but, you know, you hit a certain amount of premium volume, even if you're slowly fading away or, you know, you're slowly seeding business, you, they'll send you to the fun place every year. And, you know, and I get, Hey, I guess that's the game, right? It's, it's all economics. If you have enough revenue coming in and everybody's making money, then I guess you should, you know, and until you've earned that, I guess it, it is that way. I just wish there was, you know, and I, I wish there, I always think to myself, like, you know, you know, and the reason that I've heard that is that there's costs associated with it, right?

Like I had one carrier say, we don't want to turn you on in all 50 States. Cause it costs us 250 bucks a year to do that or whatever. And I'm like, Oh my God, if my relationship to you isn't worth $200 a year, like, holy crap. Like, you know, and, you know, and, and so, so I, I get, I get, I get some of it. I get that there's some costs or whatever, but at the same time, you know, the growth is going to come, but I don't know.

I guess when you're talking about the size of the numbers in our, in our industry, really all the growth, growth comes from book rolls from large M and a transactions, you know, you know, rogue risk or you, you know, they just don't care. They look at it and they're like, eh, you know, whatever. And I, and I get it. I get it. It's just a hard, it's hard when you're on the other side.

Um, I don't think it should deter you if you're a scratch agent or trying to become a scratch agent, but it, it definitely, I get the frustration. It's a, it's a frustrating thing to deal with that. Yeah. For me, it's a little bit of jealousy too, man. I'm just a little piddly agent.

I was like, man, I'd like to be the guy who can just go golfing every day and take a trip to the Bahamas, you know, on XYZ companies build, man, that'd be fun. But yes, I guess if I wanted to do it, I could go do it. I'll just keep bitching until then. So. Yes, I guess it is.

I guess at the end of the day, it's just jealousy because, you know, I, um, you know, you see people that like the, I always see, uh, travelers, whatever their thing is. Travelers has got their thing. I always forget the name of it. And, um, you know, I got buddies that go on this travelers trip every year and it just looks amazing. And we got these great speakers and all the muckety mucks from travelers go and glad hand and the drinks and the gorgeous thing.

And I'm just like, God, I just wish one time, one carrier, you know, I've been killing myself for three years, right. And premium, I haven't been on one trip. Like who's going to invite me? I want to go one time. I want to go someplace fun.

I'm killing myself, right. You know, like just God, you know, but again, you know, that speaks to, I think coming back to the, to the relationship side of it and the relationship with carriers. Um, and I do have a very specific question that I want to ask you in your experience, but, uh, um, and one mistake that we made at rogue was spreading our carrier, our premium out to why. So I, uh, you know, and I, and I, and I do consider this a mistake. Like if I could do it again, I probably would take half the carrier appointments and just really dial in writing business with those carriers.

Cause that seems to be how you get things done is, you know, I've said, I, I made both a ton of friends and a ton of enemies. When I did this video on LinkedIn, that was basically like, maybe we should all become Hartford captives. I don't know if you saw that video that I did. I did this. I'm sure I did.

Yeah. I was walking, I was, I was sitting here and this carrier rep was seemingly out to lunch on the fact that their user experience for quoting was absolutely horrendous. I mean, it's just horrendous. And he's like, Oh, I've never had anyone complain. And I'm like, you were either lying or you are completely naive, like one or the other, you know what I mean?

But so that was like frustrated by that and, um, whatever. So I went for this walk and I was like, you know, you could basically run your entire agency without an agency management system, without an agency management system with just Hartford's spectrum thing. Just the backend of Hartford. If that's the only carrier you had, they have ENS, they have, you know, the, this full, you know, this really nice portfolio. Obviously there'd be a lot of niche stuff.

You couldn't write whatever, but if you just struck, if you just wrote Hartford spectrum business, you could have a really nice agency. It would never need an agency management system. You could basically do whatever you wanted, just, you know, just with that system. And like, obviously Hartford loved it and it kind of went viral. Um, and then a lot of other carriers didn't like it.

Uh, but my, my, my point, all that was like, I think that it makes sense to really dedicate to one, two, maybe three carriers. And almost, you know, I almost wish that I had left more business on the table, but focused in on like a couple carriers and really built up a huge book. Say like Hartford, Hanover, and Cincinnati. Like with those three carriers, just only write what I can write with them. Anything else?

I'm sorry. I can't help you. This is who I have. This is who I write with. Bam.

And just done that. And I think we'd probably be a lot farther along with, with in certain, in certain ways. So here's my question to you. That, that huge contextual diatribe is this question. So Micah Salas, um, who's, you know, max revenue and all that kind of stuff on LinkedIn.

I don't know if you've seen all that. Okay. Yep. And, um, uh, he did this thing the other day where it was basically like talking about how, um, he was, he kind of took a screen capture of a conversation we have with an underwriter where the underwriter was essentially, I can't even, I can't even pull it up. And I'm going to ask him about this.

Uh, he's going to come on the show here in a couple of weeks. So I'm not like blown up his spot. I just, I want to get your take on this. Cause I had a take and, um, I'll share, I'm going to share his take and then mine. And then you tell me what you think being who you are.

Okay. So Micah says, and, and, and I love Micah, this is not to blow him up. This is just honest conversation. Uh, of course you're going to tell me that quoting my insurance is bad is like the title of the thing. And he's gotten really good at like the, um, at like the, uh, uh, copywriting and all the book baby shit.

Um, and basically it's this conversation with an owner, which basically says, speaking from the carrier side, the minute I saw that this account had multiple agents, um, even over the last several years, uh, I ran from the account as quick as possible. Okay. And then, um, obviously this looks like someone responding, uh, had never thought of that that way before that's an interesting viewpoint. And then the underwriter responded, um, we have accounts that people knew by name and were automatic declines. The only question was, uh, which agency this year we track these things.

Okay. And my response, so I said, okay, I understand that viewpoint. I think it's complete and other horseshit, but, but that's, I get it. My response was, um, there is also an enormous amount of hypocrisy in this take. Every carrier wants to be, wants the insured to commit or partner, but the road goes both ways.

How many carriers will dump a long-term client just because they had one bad year. Right. So like, and I, at the end I said, I call bullshit on this and now I wasn't calling bullshit. I'm like, I'm calling bullshit on the underwriter's perspective. So this is where I want to actually present you with a question after 10 minutes of fucking talking is being that we're in a hard market and we are starting to see scenarios where carriers who want to say, commit to us, commit to us, commit to us.

We're, you know, this, you should, you should dedicate your, your life as an insured to us because we're willing to give you insurance. They are now in this hard market, putting 50% renewal increases, dumping accounts that have seemingly been decent, at least decent or, or, or marginally profitable accounts. So like, how do you, how do you, in your experience, how do you manage that? How do you think through that? And kind of what is your perspective on what I just shared in that, you know, getting the, should the customer commit, should the underwriter commit?

How do we get it all working together? Sure. I have, it's perfect timing for this. So myself and another agent in our office, this would have been at the time I was in the protege. So it had been 2021 of like spring 2021.

And I was hitting it hard because I, cause I want to win the protege, but B I was using those new tools and I was killing it. And I was just going after everything I could. This particular account, the reason I went after it was they had a high mod. It was like a one point, I don't know, two, three, something. And I could see that they had it for year after year after year, hadn't really solved anything.

So we approached them with that, you know, that in mind and had got a first meeting. We actually won the account by BOR on a, with a carrier we did not represent. So it was a generic BOR. Like we did not, we didn't actually present it to a carrier. We just said, Hey, this is a symbol of you hiring us.

We'll find a fit for you. But just so you know, this is, you are hiring us to represent you in the marketplace. I said, yep, we want to work with you. We've got these tools you presented. We want to move forward.

Awesome. So we submit it to market. Same thing happened. We got decline, decline, decline, decline, decline. We've seen this account for 20 years.

Every year we never win it. Don't win it. Don't win it. Don't win it. We have a very good carrier that does a lot of restaurants.

They had declined it as well. Said we've seen this for X, Y, Z years. We, we don't want to work with it because we just continue to spend time on it and don't get it. So we said, well, can we explain what we've done with this account and why it's now an opportunity? Like someone's getting it.

And this is, you know, this is the opportunity now is they're not just quoting it. They've hired us. We've got to find a home for it. Yep. So we had a man showed him, you know, what we did on the mod.

We, you know, return to work program, new safety program, um, hooked him up with, uh, um, a local, um, physician. Uh, what do you call it? A work doctor. I can't remember the name of it. Occupational medicine.

That's it. I'm from Shelbyville, Illinois. You got to hang with me for a second. You're good. But, uh, did all this stuff.

They came in and wrote the account. And, uh, anyway, we get about six months into the policy period and we get an email from the writer saying, hey, we're getting off this account at renewal. Like, uh, what's the reasoning? Like the, the, the carrier had like a celebration that they had landed this account. This particular restaurant is the biggest non-franchise restaurant in central Illinois, basically.

And everybody wanted it, you know, if they, if they had a chance to get it, if they were given the account, everybody wanted this one other than they were tired of quoting it. Like, they're like, we just, you know, it's one that would fit well with us. We're just tired of quoting it. They sent like a higher up than our territory rep for this carrier and met with us. Like, how did you win this account?

We want to know we've been working, seeing this account for 20 years. We've never had an opportunity to win it. What'd you do different? Tell us all this stuff. It was just like one of those things where we felt we had, you know, conquered the world.

Yeah, you cracked the code. Yeah, we got it. I was like, so we showed them. A lot of it was from the protege and they're like, man, this is great. Well, like a few months later, we get this email saying, yep, we're getting off the account.

It's just like, okay, what? So it was just one of those things where like, there's no give and take. Just like you said, there's no give and take. Like we, we like won this big battle that the carrier had been having for 15, 20 years. And now all of a sudden, well, it's, it's the property value is too high for us.

I understand that. But why'd you just write it, you know, six months ago? Well, we just, we, it just bigger than what we expected. You know, it's just one of those frustrating things that, and we're, same thing. So we took it back to market, same thing.

And everybody's like, we're going to pass on this because we've worked on it for however many years and we haven't got it. It's like, okay, well, I don't know. I get frustrated as an agent because you do all these things to make the account less risky. You improve the risk profile, do all these things. You get the carry on board and then they're done with it.

You know, it's very frustrating. And then I know they say they don't want to quote it year after year after year, but then how do you win it? I mean. What's up guys. Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show.

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All right. I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. I'm of the opinion that carriers are not our partners.

Okay. I think that we look at them wrong. They are vendors. Okay. They're vendors.

It doesn't mean you can't have a great relationship with a vendor, but they're not our partners. Sure. They're not. If, uh, if Marsh came in and quoted that with that limit, they would write it all day. They wouldn't say shit.

They would. Yes, Marsh. Thank you, Marsh. We appreciate you, Marsh. Please write more business with us, Marsh.

Right. But Derek Hayden, you know, small agency, local guy gets his hands on this thing. That's a little too big for us, Derek. We're sorry. They're not our partners.

We have agents have to stop thinking of carriers as their partners. They don't like you. They don't care that, you know, whatever they're vendors. It doesn't mean, I shouldn't say they don't like you, that they, they, they would, you are just a mechanism for that underwriter and that carrier to make money. Right.

That being said, it doesn't mean we can't have a great relationship with them. This is, again, this is just my perspective. Because, because I think what happens is like that to me, I would lose my mind because I'm like, I bend over backwards. I work my freaking ass off. I got this to you.

Like, this is, this is how we make money. This is the business. This is what we do for a living. And now you're doing this to me. You know what I mean?

Like you took up my time. You sent this rep here. Like they, they are not our partners. We have to stop thinking about carriers as partners. They're not partners.

They're vendors. They are vendors that we use to do our business. Now, that being said, you can have a great relationship with a vendor. Great relationship with a vendor. You know, I talk about all the time.

They're actually a sponsor, but I have a great relationship. The people at Tivoli, right? Mark McClure, Kim Reed, our, our direct rep, Sam, they're, they're awesome to us. We, we have, we do a lot of weird, funky things with them to, because of our nature of our business. And they're awesome.

And I, but they're vendors, right? We do something shitty. We fuck up or they fuck up. The relationship is severed. And that's the way that it works, right?

We make them money. They make us money, but we're not like, it's not like we're fans. You know what I mean? And I think that this, what I don't like that I think agents get sucked into this is, I get why carriers do it. And I'm not, again, not knocking carriers.

I'm just saying, I think as agents, we have to properly set our own mental expectations here that it is in the carrier's best interest to make it seem like they love us and they care about us. And we're these dedicated partners and we're the agency plant. It is in their best interest from a marketing perspective to do that. However, there is, there's this whole other side of the business that is like the business side, which is like, yeah, we're, he's just a small agent. You know, really?

Did Marsh send it? No. Okay. Cut it. You know what I mean?

We don't want to be on that one. Cut it. Yeah. And they have no problem. And it will be stone cold about it.

And they'll look at you and they'll shrug their shoulders and they'll go, sorry, Derek, you know, but Hey, still need that $500,000 premium commitment. You know, so it's like, I think that by properly setting our expectations for the relationships, we can actually go into them with like eyes wide open. Not that, you know, whatever, but it's just like, I get it, man. It's so freaking difficult. And then you're trying to navigate a hard market, which means more discussions, better, you know, you need deeper, richer submission quality.

I mean, think about the submission you just explained, holy shit. I mean, the amount of work and effort that went into that thing. Right. Yeah. No, I'm glad you said it because that I have felt more and more, you know, I'm in my 11th year now in the industry.

And the more I grow, the more I see, it's just like, I'm just a pawn and it doesn't matter as much. Like you said, as much as they say, they want to be your partner and we want to win this account together. They'll chew you up and spit you out faster than, you know, you can snap your fingers. I feel like it's just almost like you're working with puppets. Like, it's just like, and I guess we're in sales too.

You and I can probably spit a pretty good game in front of a prospect. But I don't feel like the carrier in most cases can back it up. Like I feel like I do with my clients. I at least follow through with what I say I'm going to do. I feel like that rarely happens on the carrier side.

I do think there are rare relationships where that isn't the case. And I do think there are certain companies that are set up different. Like I'll take a company like Cincinnati. I love Cincinnati as a company. They're very difficult in some ways, right?

They're a little more old school. Submission quality really matters. Like I actually am doing like an internal masterclass for my team on how to submit business to non-portal-based companies. So Cincinnati is a non-portal-based company. We really have two main non-portal-based companies, which is Acadia and Cincinnati.

And submitting business to them is different. You know what I mean? Like you need to put a true submission together. And here's all the pieces. And here's what you need.

And how to sell it in a narrative. And, you know, so I'm kind of putting this masterclass together for the team. Because I looked at one of our – because they're bitching at me about, you know, so-and-so at Cincinnati is not getting back to us. And I'm like, I know him. You know, I mean, he's pretty good at what he does.

Like, you know, I feel this is probably an us issue. You know, I just – my gut told me this was an us issue and not a him issue, just knowing this guy. And so I looked at him. So I said, hey, when you submit business to him, can you just put me in CC so I can – I made it seem like I was going to put pressure on him. But really, I wanted to see how they were submitting business.

And I was like, hey, can you quote this? Dot, dot, dot. Like that was like the whole submission with like an accord form. And, you know, I just was like, oh, God. I just – like my – you know, so like in this case, I was like, oh, actually, this isn't the carrier's fault at all.

This is – we're not doing our job. So I guess have you guys – do you focus on, you know, what – I don't want you to give away your secret sauce. But like to me, things like submission quality – I'm not talking about your ability to punch numbers into a portal. I'm talking about when you're actually submitting business like for larger, small stuff, middle market stuff, whatever. Like do you spend a lot of time on it?

Do you have a template that you use? Do you have a format? Like that to me, it feels like a secret weapon if you can really dial in a good submission. And how they refer to it at Cincinnati, I love this concept, is top of pile. You're either a bottom of pile agent or you're a top of pile agent.

And I was like, I get that we're bottom of pile today, but I want to be top of pile. Yeah. That's a – so I changed my mentality on this. I used to do – so our agency really got in the habit of doing the written narrative. Yep.

And I swear no one read it because I would put information in that narrative and I'd get questions back asking exactly what I'd spelled out in the narrative. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I did, I changed to doing a video narrative, like a video submission. I love it, yeah. And it's good, but some carriers will say they can't open it because of their privacy practices and stuff, which is irritating.

But the carriers that do watch it, I can tell – obviously, I can track. They'll watch it 10, 12 times, and I'll be like, they're writing this account. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they're following along. I can put – I can do a screen share and show, hey, this is the brand new return of work program we just put in.

Here's what we identified as the – what they didn't have going on. Here's how we're fixing it. Here's why you, Mr. or Mrs. Underwriter, are getting a better risk than you would have had prior to us coming in. So I've changed my – on those key accounts, those bigger prospects, I do the video submission.

I feel like that changes – it's more – they feel like more a part of the account versus just reading something on paper. They feel like they can see the building through video, see what we're doing. So, yeah, I've started doing that. Plus, you get to track it, and you can see. Yeah, exactly.

You seem like you can also – I know we use – I was using Vidyard, but we moved back to Loom. I like Loom a lot. With Loom, I can see when they forward it to somebody or when someone else other than the person I send it to watches it because I'll be like, you know, XYZ at, you know, insert carrier, and then also being like anonymous at, insert carrier, you know, so you can see that they've, like, sent it to other people or whatever. Yeah, yeah. Like you said, it gets you all excited because you're like, oh, they're, like, serious about this one.

Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I use Vidyard. I started with Loom, and I went to Vidyard because I use that for prospecting purposes too. So I can't really track, like you said. I can't really track if they forwarded it, but I try to do a – I'll either do a separate intro and then edit it to, like, you know, Cincinnati Insurance, auto owners, to, like, make it for them and then edit it in so it makes it sound like I just sent it to them.

That's just a little trick. You know, don't want to give away all my secret sauce, I guess. But if it's for that underwriter, if I say that underwriter's name and the company they represent, they feel like, oh, he just sent this to me even though I'm just editing in every carrier we send it to. Don't worry about giving away your secret sauce. I've learned anything.

No one will ever do it. Right. You know, the 15 agents that will actually take this ridiculously amazing idea that you just shared and actually use it, you'll never compete against it. Sure, sure. Yeah.

I mean, like, the one thing I've realized that's amazing about our industry is that no one – everyone listens to these great ideas and then never does anything different. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. But I couldn't agree with you more. Do you also use – are you using video for – because I know you work on larger stuff in general, not just, like, $2,500 pops.

So, like, are you also using video for your proposals or are all your proposals still going, like, you know, kind of face-to-face in person or how are you managing that? I would say 80% of my small commercial and personal lines proposals are video proposals. Nice. My larger accounts, you know, the middle market, or at least what I consider middle market, I'm going in person. But I – one of my claims to fame during the pandemic was I actually – so Vidyard nominated me for an award based off my close ratio with video proposals.

Nice. So I hit a 91% close ratio in 2020 using video proposals. And, I mean, obviously, you couldn't meet in person at that time. I was just knocking them out of the park. And being from a small area, there was no other agent even familiar with how to do that.

So people would come to me and we'd win it. And just – so I've stuck with that. And it's been – it's a very – it's so – it's such a time saver too. Oh, dude. Yeah.

I've been preaching this. I did a whole thing. My presentation that I've been doing, I have a bunch of keynotes coming up. And a big part of it is how to close – my close ratio on video proposals was 89%. Yeah.

Fuck, right now I've got to increase my – now I've got to – I can tell you I've not hit 91% since 2020. But it's been in like the 80s. Yeah. It's just – I mean, even if it was 80, think about that. Eight out of every 10 video proposals are closing.

Like, mine was – and I tracked it for over a year. And we did use – it was Neoteric Agent then. It's now Better Proposal. So I used – I love that software. Just the way it presents it with – just me personally.

I'm not – sure, sure. I don't make any money off them or whatever. Just I – that's what we use and I really like it. But, yeah, 89% close ratio and people still, like, ask me these questions. And I'm like, guys, this is – there's no – it's right there.

Like, the person won what you – and I'd be interested if you saw it. Like, I saw most people who got the video proposal wouldn't open it until the evening. Yep. They would watch it multiple times. One out of every five would forward it to somebody or whatever.

Or you'd see someone else watching it. Like, they'd say, hey, come look at this. You know, spouse or a business partner or whatever. Yep. And then I would get – and this is the part that I love because we track this number internally.

My metric beyond even that was one call closes. And what I meant by that is not one call close like I close you on the phone. That's the misnomer. What I meant is I only want to speak to you on the phone one time. So, what happened with the video proposal, and I'm interested in your feedback, is that I'd go through my process and, bam, I'd send the video proposal out.

And they wouldn't need another phone call. They'd watch it three or four times. They'd do whatever. And then I'd just get an email back. This looks great.

Let's do it. What do we need to do now? And I'd send them the e-docs. They'd send me back the e-docs. Account closed.

I never had to speak to them again. Yep. Like, that to me, you know, again, for the smaller stuff, I'd say $25,000 or premium or below, that works incredibly well. It just, I just, like I said, you're 91%. Now in the 80s, when I was tracking it myself for over a year, it was 89%.

Like, this shit works. Like, there's just no doubt. 100%. Yeah, that's one thing I would say if anybody, there's two things that I feel I've been able to improve the close ratio. I mean, not that 91% is bad, but just give you a better chance to win it in the video with maybe, like you said, the one call close.

The two things that will help you close it will be, one, do not, if you email the video to them, do not attach the quote with the video. Because if that PDF or whatever it is is attached, they're going to click on that and look at the price, and then they're not going to watch the video. So just send the video. Make them actually view what you're recommending. And then the second one is just give them the instructions for binding.

Like, how do they hire you? I think a lot of people forget that. They'll just send the video, and then, you know, the people will call back like, okay, where do I, how do I do it? It just streamlines it if you put in at the end of the video, hey, if you want to move forward with this, all we need is signed applications and a payment, and we'll get it going. Here's how we can do that.

Just send me an email saying I want to move forward. I'll send you the e-docs. Boom. Just explain how they can hire you. And those two things, I think, is what increased my close ratio using video proposals in 2020 and beyond.

See, what's interesting is I always attach the carrier proposal, always. Do you? Really? So, you know, and this, again, this is what makes this stuff interesting because it's like, you know, different experiences or whatever. So, how I set it up was when I would get to the point that I decided this was a qualified lead, okay, I would basically set up the video proposal at that point before I gathered information, right?

I would say, you know, so I had this whole, like, open-ended question process I'd go through, and then I'd be like, okay. In my mind, I'd be like, qualified, qualified candidate. Okay. So, I'd say, here's what's going to happen next. I have a few, like, hyper-tactical questions that I have to ask in order to get what I need to rate you up.

I'm going to ask you those next. Once I do that, the next thing that's going to happen is I'm going to go do my job, okay? Once I get the best coverage at the most competitive rate that I can find for our 50 carriers, I'm only going to present you with one quote because it's going to be my recommendation when I think the best is, right? The best coverage at the most competitive rate. Great.

I'm going to send you a video proposal, okay? That comes in three parts. Part number one is going to be just a brief narrative, brief overview of what it is, and that's usually in the body of the email. There's then going to be a video where I – it'll be under five minutes. Most of them are under three minutes where I break down why I picked that carrier, the coverages, et cetera, okay?

Sure. And then I'm going to attach the carrier proposal in a PDF because I want you, Derek, to know everything that I know, okay? I go, you ever buy a car? Yeah, sure. I bought it.

It sucks, right? Because you don't know. Has it had water damage? Now there's car facts and shit, so that argument doesn't work as well today. But, like, you know, I would say, like, you know, you don't – no one wants to try to buy something that they feel like they don't know all the information.

So you now have everything I have. So if we talk again, you're coming from a position of power. How does that sound? That sounds amazing. So now I feel like by – I really never had them just look at the proposal, tell me it's expensive and come back to me because I set it up as, like, part of it, like, another step, not just another thing.

And I always attach the carrier proposal because what I – like, my thought was, and I feel like this is justified, is the psychology was they are getting the inside baseball. They're getting the inside look, right? Where when I get a – when I see a, like, agency proposal, I get the, like, ego behind it. Sure, sure. But I'm also like, yeah, but you could have made up all those numbers.

Like, if I were getting that proposal from someone, I'd be like, are we – are these – like, I don't know. I could have written anything in a Word doc. You know what I mean? I don't know. And again, I guess that's illegal and all this kind of stuff or whatever.

But, you know, I just – to me, like, it's like, here, you have everything I have. Make your decision. I don't really give a fuck, you know? And it sounds like you're doing a good job of setting it up. I think that's the difference.

And not that I don't set it up well, but I definitely don't go to that extent. I just say, hey, the way I'm going to present this is through a video proposal. You're going to get a link. And I will say, I try to text it. Our agency has the ability to text.

So I will text it if I can just because you get the open rate on email versus text just to move it along. So sending a PDF through text, I usually don't do that. Email, sometimes I will. And also, if it's a current client or somebody I know well, I'll attach it because they're going to take the time to watch it. For example, and I know a lot of people probably listen and saying, well, does that open you up to E&O if you're not showing on the full proposal?

I review the entire proposal on screen share. So they're seeing it anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They just don't have the hard document. But like I just recently got a new commercial account as an attorney.

So I attached everything I could because I know attorneys are pretty thorough. At least their team is thorough usually. So I attached it in that case and then explained why I recommend certain coverages there on the video. So each situation is going to be different. I typically, if it's someone I don't know well and that I want them to watch the video, I won't attach it just because I don't want them to click the attachment.

You know, I've spent 10 minutes doing a video. I don't want them to just open and say, oh, $5,000, that's more expensive when I'm paying them. I'm out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will say, too, the other piece, just to be fair to the process, is that we deal with a lot of people who this is their first policy they're ever having.

Right, okay. People who tend to come to us tend to be, hey, I'm just starting a business or I've had a business and now I need a COI because I just got a big contract. Or, hey, we're hiring our first employee. You know, we're growing. So we get a lot of newer businesses.

A lot of our clients are newer. You know, we're not, you know, we don't, right now, obviously, you know, the goal is to eventually crack that market. But, you know, we don't get a lot of people who are like, hey, I've been in 10 business for 10 years with a local agent and, you know, I'm looking to shop my insurance. Like, we don't, you know, people don't come to us for that right now. Right.

That type of customer is staying in the local independent market. You know, our premier team, the premier side of our business is meant to disrupt that, to come in. But our select team, which does the majority of the PIF volume, not necessarily the premium volume, but certainly the policies and force volume. They, they're, it's a lot of five years and under, been in business five years and under. Hey, I just got, like, I just, I did, I was actually working on an account today because I, I like technology businesses.

That's like probably the one area that I get really interested in some of the accounts. So every once in a while, when an interesting technology business will come in, I'll take that. And I was working on one actually this morning before our call. And, uh, and, um, you know, this is a guy that's been in business for 10 years and he always just had a GL policy, but he just got a big contract. Um, that's going to be like a, an ongoing thing for him.

And now he needs, you know, he, now he has all these requirements. So, you know, and that'll be, end up being like a $10,000 account. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, and talk through them and set expectations and like, but it's his first policy he's ever had. So it's different. And what I like about that, what's nice about that. Some people don't like new accounts, but what I like about it is I get to, hopefully, you know, hopefully I get to build it and set him up in a way that he is doing it the right way from the beginning. Right.

Cause how many times do you find someone who it's just, they've been in business for five years and yeah, they have insurance, but it's a mess. Right. Because they like piece together this and nothing was ever really explained to them. And, you know, I always think like, man, I, I, I knew where businesses can be tough and, you know, I know they have a higher, uh, or, uh, a lower retention rate and fail rate and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, man, you get to kind of steward them to doing it the right way the first time and hopefully set them up properly as the goal.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't always work out that way, but that's the, uh, that's the vision, I guess. Oh yeah.

No, that's great. Cool, man. So where do you, um, you know, we got a few minutes here left. I, I, uh, before, before I, you know, we wrap up and everything, you know, where, where do you see, you know, where do you see the biggest opportunities today? You know, you, whether for yourself or for, you know, just looking out over the market, like you're thinking to yourself, you know, I want to put, I want to put another million premium on the books, you know, whatever.

I just pick a number, right. Like, is it, Hey, the process I have is great. And it's just continuing to grind and staying focused and, you know, finding ways to continue to grow or are there new opportunities? Is it expanding your geographic footprint and using things like, like video proposals to continue to deliver that in person? Or, you know, where do you see, particularly to, to your expertise, right?

This, um, uh, local, more local agent kind of model. Where do you see the opportunities for people? Where do you see opportunities for yourself to continue to grow? I would say, and this is not just me, but smaller, like hometown agents in general, just do something that's different. You know, I, I recently had the opportunity to teach a class and the moral of the entire class, it was a seven hour bootcamp sales training based off of protege tactics that, you know, learned during the reality show.

The moral of the story is do something different. Everybody, most agencies, especially in a small town operate in this box. You know, they, they're the ones that are on the radio saying, we're going to get you the best coverage at the best price. Come see us to get a free quote. It's like, people are so sick of hearing it.

Just do something different. Um, and most of the time, all you got to do is develop a value proposition. That's unique compared to any other agent, whether it's a captive or independent agent, develop a value proposition that you can consistently deliver and follow through on. And if you're, and I would recommend that not being an insurance based value proposition, don't solve their problems with insurance because they don't want their problems and solve with, solve with insurance. They want, they know they're spending a lot of money on this product that they hope that they never use.

Yep. Give them something that's going to improve their business, improve their income. We all know the state of the economy right now, especially for business owners. It's very, very tough. They can't find employees.

Can't keep employees. What are you going to do to solve those problems? And it's not an insurance quote. I can tell you, that's not going to solve a single problem that they have. So do something that is going to help you stand out and provide legit value to those business owners.

Whether that's work comp or, you know, safety or whatever your agency has access to, use that to leverage your value. And, and I know in that class, a lot of people are like, well, my agency doesn't really have access to anything. And the one thing when we meet with these carrier reps that, that they always say is no one takes advantage of the tools that they're offering to agents. So you have free tools at your fingertips, typically through the risk management department of every carrier that your agency represents. Just call them and say, hey, what are some of the unique tools you've invested in that me as an agent can use to, you know, attract and retain accounts.

They're going to give you a freaking video library of everything that they have access to take a day or two days or three days and learn what material is there. Figure out how you can deliver that in a unique package to your prospect and client and present that, you know, instead of presenting insurance coverage at a certain price. That alone is going to, in a hard market, soft market, it doesn't matter. You're going to be more valuable than the guy next to you or gal next to you because you're delivering a unique proposition that they've never heard of before. Dude, that's the perfect way to end the show.

You are the man. I love it. I'm so happy for your success that you've had, both in the protege, in your career. I'm so glad that you're out in the circuit now a little bit, starting to talk. So if anyone's listening to this and has conferences, like Derek knows what he's talking about.

I can't recommend you highly enough. I think the way you think about the business is exactly the right way. I love that you both understand and respect the traditional way of doing business as well as what we need to do moving forward. And, bro, I'm just – I can't believe it's taken this long to have you on the show. I'm just happy that we finally had a chance to connect here and do this, and I wish you nothing but success.

Where can people connect with you, learn more, and if someone does want to hire you to come in and do a speaking gig, where can they do that? Absolutely. The best way for the general public would be LinkedIn, if you have LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is my favorite platform. I try to produce as much content for LinkedIn, usually at least daily, sometimes a little less than that.

But LinkedIn is number one. I'll also give my cell phone number. It's 217-246-7523. You can text, call, whatever. Happy to answer any questions you have.

And likewise, Hanley, I appreciate everything that you do for the industry. Appreciate you having me on, and it's been a pleasure, man. You're the man, bro. We're out of here. All right.

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